


The Challenge

by ShinobiCyrus



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: F/F, Gen, Homeworld headcanons, Sworn To The Sword, coliseum battle, gem society, life before the war
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-21
Updated: 2015-09-21
Packaged: 2018-04-22 15:09:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4840097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShinobiCyrus/pseuds/ShinobiCyrus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Deep down she knows she wasn’t made for this. A Pearl had no business in the Sky Arena, no chance against a true gem warrior in battle. But for Rose…she’d try.</p><p>“Please, let me just do this for you, Rose.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Challenge

There were no sounds of battle to greet Pearl after the warp stream deposited her at the Sky Arena. Echoes rolled off the walls, the indistinct murmurings of a crowd. Rose’s voice spoke, clear above the rest, projecting strength and command all the more compelling for its caritas. Pearl’s feet had barely settled on the crystal pad before she was already moving, past the seal of the Four Paragons and darting up the stone stairway in quick, scurrying steps. 

She wasn’t too late. There was still time.

The stands were densely packed. Gems of every conceivable cut and hue had all quieted the moment Rose Quartz had opened her mouth to speak. 

Pearl saw her back from the top of the coliseum, her hair immense and vibrant like a cultivated field of pink curls. 

“I didn’t come to fight, Heliotrope,” Rose implored. “There’s already been enough pointless skirmishes. I came to talk with you and the gems gathered here so we can all keep this situation from spiraling out of control.”

The gem at the other end of the arena snorted contemptuously. She was almost as tall as Rose, aristocratic cape thrown over one arm. Pearl knew her by reputation only: a warrior-caste that took particular satisfaction utilizing her skills against non-gem enemies of the Homeworld. Other species had fragile bodies that required internal fluids to maintain functionality, and this Heliotrope had become quite infamous for her…fascination with the mechanics of foes that did not burst into smoke when mortally injured. 

She’d embraced the grisly nom de guerre some of the human servants had given her, even expressed it in her chosen form. Her skin smokey green spotted with little splatters of red.

Bloodstone swept her thick arms wide, flourishing her cape to the assembled crowd. “Look around you, _my lady_. These gems didn’t come here for a debate- they came here to see just how far the Great Rose Quartz will go for a garbage-dump world full of savages scavenging in mud.”

Rose closed her eyes and shook her head solemnly. “Please, don’t make me do this.”

Bloodstone sneered. ”Is this really the same Rose Quartz that toppled the Great Heresy? The one who led our fleets to victory at the Pillars of Creation? Whose Laser Light Bombardment burned all of Yith into molten glass?” She crossed her arms across her broad chest. “I don’t know what’s worse: your sickening affection for those bloodsacks, or your  _cowardice_.”

More than a few gems in the crowd shot up to their feet in outrage. Pearl even thought she spotted Sapphire calmly pull an incensed Ruby back down to her seat.

Pearl’s sword-hand clenched. 

Bloodstone laid out her ultimatum. “The challenge has been issued. Accept, or show your back and hope those famous tears of yours can nurse a broken honor.”

She darted through the stands, slipping between surprised gems, and leapt. Rose saw her shadow pass over the arena floor, slowly turned her head up, not fast enough to react.

Pearl landed gracefully on her toes between Rose and the Heliotrope. “I accept your challenge on behalf of my Liege!”

If they were incensed before, her declaration triggered an uproar. Some gems applauded, far more jeered that a  _Pearl_ had no business in the Arena. She noticed a scattered handful of her sisters among them, frowning with concern, confusion, outright disapproval. 

(They would never understand)

Bloodstone laughed loud enough for all the Arena to hear. “ _This_  is your champion? A demented Pearl that thinks that it can fight?”

“Pearl, no!” Rose cried.

“It’s too late for your pet, Lady Quartz,” Bloodstone said. “The challenge has been answered.”

“Please, let me just do this for you, Rose.” Pearl glared at Heliotrope’s crimson eyes. She reached within her gem, not for the lance that was a manifestation of her paradigm, but for the rapier she kept stored there; a long slender blade shaped from unremarkable Earth minerals and honed to a mirror edge.

Bloodstone raised an eyebrow. “What… _is_  that? Are you actually going to try to fight me with some primitive human shank?”

Pearl sliced the air with a flourish, and raised her blade in a formal salute. “I’ve chosen my weapon. Summon yours, and let this battle be decided.”

“Have it your way, dreg.” Bloodstone shrugged off her cape, baring the glowing gem nestled on her forearm. She held out her arm and the glow of her gem intensified, spread, and condensed into a solid shape. 

It was a kanabo, a massive studded war-club that cracked the Arena floor when it landed fully formed, tall as its wielder and thicker around than Pearl’s whole body. Bloodstone grasped its handle and easily hefted it one-handed to rest against her shoulder. 

There would be no parrying that massive cudgel. Even a glancing blow would be more than enough to do the job. 

Someone in the stands seemed to have the same idea. “Pulverize that spit-scum’s gem!”

Ruby hollered, “Go Pearl! KICK HER ASS!” before Sapphire shushed her. 

With a dancer’s poise, Pearl stepped into a guard stance. 

Deep down she knew she wasn’t built for fighting. She was just an ignoble Pearl with a few centuries worth of fencing training. Heliotrope was a 100,000 year veteran that had trampled across galaxies and crushed countless worlds in the name of the Paragons. Her only advantage was what Heliotrope didn’t know. 

Rose’s worried face caught in the gleaming sword.

The Sky Arena went silent.

Both gems were perfectly, unnaturally still, immune to the air’s chill high above the clouds. Their shadows were distorted, elongated silhouettes painted onto the smooth stone ground. 

Bloodstone moved first. 

The kanabo swung low, meaning to bat Pearl aside in a single blow. She arched back, balanced on one foot and body level with the ground, letting the Kanabo to pass scant inches over her. Righting herself, Pearl smoothly stepped aside just in time for Bloodstone to smash her weapon into the floor, then backflipped effortlessly over a second, hasty swing.

To outside observers, their battle must have seemed improvised. In actuality, Bloodstone’s weapon was impressive, brutally effective, but its size severely limited her options in combat. Pearl quickly analyzed her fighting style, saw the patterns in her movements, accounted for every possible blow, counter-blow, and follow up. It didn’t matter how fast Bloodstone could swing her glorified club, or how ferociously she smashed craters into the arena floor. Pearl had internalized it, knew exactly where not to be, knew where to go to bait her into attacking where Pearl was in the best position to make her next move. Waited patiently for the perfect moment for one good strike.  To everyone else, the battle went on like a carefully choreographed dance. 

Bloodstone growled in frustration. Every missed blow, every easy evasion only seemed to incense her further. “Enough of your prancing and  _fight_  me you coward!”

She turned her kanabo on one of the four obelisks marking the corners of the battle-space. As it crumbled, she shape-shifted her free hand to expand large enough to take hold of the collapsing pillar and hurled it at Pearl like an enormous spear.

Okay…Pearl might not have seen that one coming. She’d plotted the entire fight a hundred-moves ahead, and now it was all down to less than a second. Now she would have to improvise. She  _hated_  improvising. 

With nothing but her oath and a sword, Pearl charged towards the point of the obelisk, slid down to her knees and skidded under it. She came upright and faced Bloodstone head on. Surprised by Pearl’s sudden aggression, she reacted to hastily, bringing down the kanabo two-handed and momentarily wedging it solidly in the Arena floor. 

The perfect moment.

Pearl stepped onto the kanabo and used it as a springing point, executed a perfect  _tour en l'air_ and thrust her sword into Heliotrope’s forearm and retracted it before she landed. 

Bloodstone made a grunt of pain. The kanabo went slack in her fingers and dissipated into a flurry of disjointed magical energy as it hit the ground. The crowd went silent, not quite understanding what had happened.

Pearl flourished with her sword and saluted again, ignoring the furious, panicked glare Heliotrope leveled at her. She nestled the damaged arm against her chest to hide the crack in her gem. 

Managing a clean cut to Heliotrope’s inner-arm would have been difficult, but piercing through the  _other_ side of her arm? Much easier.

“This contest is over,” Pearl announced. “Unless you’d like to test just how much strain your gem can handle until it breaks.”

The crowd clamored with disbelief.  Heliotrope ground her teeth, biting back her rage. 

“I thought not,” Pearl spun on her toes and walked away dismissively. “Maybe if you ask my Lady nicely, she’ll spare some of her famous tears for you.”

Rose waited for her at the edge of the arena, relief etched on her face. Pearl wanted to run to her, jump into her wide, enveloping embrace, but not there, not worth a coliseum full of clamoring spectators. Pearl strode with her back straight and her head held high. She’d actually  _done_  it. The oath she’d sworn to herself centuries ago, on the very sword she’d-

Rose’s eyes widened. She reached for her impotently. “Pearl! Behind-!”

She couldn’t turn fast enough. Just a glimpse of Heliotrope, malfunctioning body warped and distorted, her arm elongated like a lashing tendril. 

A new kanabo struck Pearl in chest. She was lifted off the ground as if something had seized her from behind and  _pulled_. She flew. Saw only Rose’s face- those full lips Pearl had achingly memorized moving wordlessly. She heard only Bloodstone’s berserker howls. 

There was a sudden, jarring stop. Pearl impacted the hard architecture of an obelisk, felt as though she hung limply in the air until the ground swiftly rose to catch her. Her sword clattered somewhere nearby. She tried to move, tried to pull herself back up- only managed to twitch her fingers. Or perhaps it was simply a glitch from a failing construct.

Then the whole world lost cohesion and burst into white smoke. 

It was the opposite, of course. Her body was too damaged to sustain itself and her conscious had been forced to retreated back within the fragile shell of her gem. Even half-cracked, it would be easy for Bloodstone to finish her off. She could bring the kanabo down on her defenseless gem, crush it underfoot, or just squeeze it in her hands until it fractured. Formless and floating in the intangible ether of her mindspace, Pearl waited for oblivion.

And waited.

When it became clear that oblivion was going to be inconsiderately tardy, Pearl passed the time by recalling the battle from her memory. Made careful notes of minor inefficiencies and flaws in her technique. 

Her glaring mistake, of course, was not running her sword-point all the way through Bloodstone’s gem. Pearl hadn’t wanted to kill her- she’d only wanted to teach her a lesson. Maybe she hadn’t because it had never even occurred to her that it was an option. All those years of training- learning to fight- and she had never made the connection that being Rose’s Knight might mean needing to kill for her. 

Of course it hadn’t, Pearls weren’t made for that.

(That didn’t mean she couldn’t learn.)

Time flowed differently while you were within a gem. Pearl had no way of knowing how much had passed on the outside, but surely it had been ample time for Heliotrope to finish her off. 

No doubt, someone (Rose) had intervened. 

She set to work on her construct, the physical projection of her being. With a thought, she conjured the framework. Pearl was fond of the basic shape- it was all minor tweaks. Infinitesimal details that only she would notice. An extra centimeter of height, adjustments to the proportions of her extremities, deepened the rosy shade of pink to her hair, made sure every strand was in its proper place.

How some gems could just rush their regenerations, she could never understand.

She really would have been comfortable quadruple-checking the finished construct again, but there was a more urgent need that overrode even her exacting attention to detail. She took the thought- the concept of her projection- and started weaving light and magic and energy together. Molded and stabilized it and let it naturally expand outward, past the intangibility of thought within into the material without.

Still aglow from her regeneration, Pearl’s newly formed feet lightly landed on solid ground. She opened her eyes to and saw Ruby and Sapphire waiting, the hands without their gems clasped together.

“You’re back!” Ruby said.

Pearl moved her body experimentally. “How long was I-”

“Six days,” Sapphire said. “A bit fast for you.”

She looked around the lavish apartment. Familiar alabaster stone aglow with gentle cerulean light, a masterfully carved statue mimicking a gem in the form of some long-extinct race. The sound of crashing water from an open archway leading to a high balcony. "Is this the Lunar Sea Spire?”

“Rose’s private suite," Sapphire's tone was always cold and lofty. With her eye obscured by her snowy hair, she regarded Pearl inscrutably. "She wanted someplace safe and comfortable for you to be while you regenerated.”

“What happened to Heliotrope, after she-”

“Nailed you with a cheap shot?” Ruby said.

“Yes. That.”

It worried Pearl that Ruby actually hesitated. Sapphire merely said. “Rose intervened before she could shatter your gem. Tried to talk her down. Even offered to heal her.”

Of course Rose would offer. She would have done it even if Bloodstone had tried to kill  _her_  in the Arena. “Did Heliotrope-?”

“She said no,” Ruby replied, back to her usual bluntness. Obviously more had transpired than a polite refusal.

“Rose had no choice,” Sapphire said somberly.

Crushed, Pearls shoulders sank. She’d taken up the challenge to  _prevent_ that; as much to protect Rose from having to sully her hands as safeguard her from harm. Instead she’d ruined everything.

“I made a complete fool of myself, didn’t I?”

“You were trying to protect someone you cared about,” Sapphire said, almost kindly. “It was a very noble thing to do.”

“But yeah, that was pretty stupid,” Ruby nodded.

Sapphire angled her head in Ruby’s general direction. “Should I tell Pearl about a few of your nobly stupid gestures? Like when we first met?”

Somehow, Ruby’s skin turned a shade redder. “You said that it was sweet!”

Pearl tried not to stare at the way Sapphire's mouth quirked. “It was. And very, very, stupid.” 

Ruby pouted audibly. Sapphire chuckled and pecked her on the cheek.

A line of captured moonlight drew the shape of a door into the wall, peeling it open wide enough for Rose to step through.

“Pearl!” She cleared the suite in three great strides and and pulled her into a crushing hug.

Pearl blushed and stammered, her face mashed inelegantly into Rose’s chest Oh. Oh dear. That was Rose’s _gem_  Pearl was feeling pressed against her.

Sapphire tugged Ruby towards the door. “Let’s give these two some privacy.”

“Hey, but I wanted to-”

“I’ll tell you how it ends later.”

The wall sealed seamlessly shut behind them. Rose barely seemed to notice. “Thank goodness you’re alright,” she murmured into Pearl’s hair. “I was so worried.”

Oh, she could stay like this for a few centuries. Just to feel the closeness. “I’m fine Rose, really. My regeneration went perfectly.”

“I was worried the moment you jumped into that arena,” Rose’s powerful arms squeezed a little tighter as if Pearl might get ideas to do so again. “What were you  _thinking_?”

Pearl pulled her face away to look up at her. “I was only trying to keep you safe.”

“By getting yourself killed?”

“I had everything under control! Bloodstone was the one that broke the-”

“Heliotrope doesn’t-” Rose stopped herself, closed her eyes and breathed. “Heliotrope didn’t care about the Code of Combat. If I hadn’t been there to enforce it, none of the other gems there would have censured her.”

Because she’d been a Heliotrope, and she was just a Pearl. Rose didn’t say it, but the implication was still there.

Something in Pearl’s face made Rose soften her expression. She sighed ruefully, brushing a stray hair that Pearl had decided to leave unchanged. “As hard as it was to watch, you were still amazing, Pearl.”

Pearl blushed. "You...you really think so?"

"Of course you were. No other Pearl has ever done what you've done," Her expression fell, full cheeks and dimples made for smiles weighed with worry. “I only wish you could promise me to never to endanger yourself like that again, if I didn’t know you so well.”

Pearl bowed her head between them. The one command she couldn’t obey. “I can’t, Rose. You’re too important. To-” Me. “To all of us. All the gems on this planet that need your guidance.”

“I never meant for this to happen. Not for you to throw yourself into danger for me, or to force all the gems on Earth to choose their loyalties. We’re on the verge of a civil war- and I don’t think I can stand to watch good gems kill and die for me.”

“But they  _want_  to! No matter what you choose, or where you take us, we’ll follow.”

Rose reached down and cupped the side of Pearl’s face. Woeful tears glimmered in her eyes. "I know, my Pearl. I’m just afraid of where I’m taking you.”

**Author's Note:**

> My first Steven Universe fic I wrote after being inspired by Sworn to the Sword. Pearl's one of my favorite gems, and all the complicated layers of her character and what the show is hinting was her status and purpose back on Homeworld is really fascinating. Also I am in the camp theorizing all about Rose having been a 'Diamond' like Yellow diamond and the other two, blue and white, that we see on all the old gem ruins. If you were wondering who the 'Paragons' were, that's the name I've given the gem leadership, for simplicity's sake. 
> 
> Thanks for reading. Kudos and reviews are always welcome!


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